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The News Journal

Tom Ferry (left) and his successor, Dr. Kevin Churchwell, chat Tuesday at Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Rockland. / Special to The News Journal/SAQUAN STIMPSON

TOM FERRY

TITLE: CEO of Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children

AGE: 64

FAMILY: Wife, Diane, and adult children Thomas III and Elizabeth

HOMES: Centreville and Lewes

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Dr. Stephen Lawless recalled one of his first at-length conversations as a newly hired critical-care doctor with his new boss, Tom Ferry.

Ferry was raving to Lawless during the early 1990s about the potential for new investment at Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children. The investment was in electronic health record technology. Looking back, the technology, which was adopted by the Rockland hospital in 1996, was one of many initiatives that Ferry had supported that have been successful.

"I remember him trying to explain to me what electronic health records were, and I was like, 'What are you talking about?' " Lawless said. "Most of the stuff like that that he wants goes in, and it stays. It starts getting implemented, and it has staying power."

Ferry, too, has had staying power. He will retire at the end of this month after 31 years with the duPont Hospital, 29 years as its chief executive officer.

Compared to the leaders of other children's hospitals nationwide, Ferry is the second-longest-tenured CEO. He is among the 10 longest-tenured CEOs of all hospitals in the United States. He is being succeeded by Dr. Kevin Churchwell, who comes to Delaware from Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tenn.

"Having done this for a long time, it's time to make a change," said Ferry, 64, who also is the senior vice president of hospital operations for Nemours, which oversees duPont Hospital. "The organization is in a really good place. I thought, after getting past 30 years, how much longer I wanted to keep doing the same thing. I felt like this was the right time to make a change."

Ferry directed duPont Hospital as it mushroomed from a specialty orthopedic institute into a full-service, critical- and acute-care pediatric teaching hospital. During his three decades at the helm, duPont Hospital's staff grew to 3,200 from 600, admissions increased to 10,000 annually from 1,100, and outpatient visits ballooned to 400,000 from 37,000. The annual budget at the hospital also has skyrocketed to $475 million from $27 million when he first started.

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The Nemours-run pediatric practices throughout Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey are the brainchild of Ferry. He also is credited with making duPont Hospital into one of the safest hospitals in the nation.

Employees at duPont are sad to see him retire, said Dr. James Richard Bowen, an orthopedic surgeon at the hospital and one of only a few employees who has been there longer than Ferry.

"When you have a CEO who has a very forward thought process and is able to advance health care, it's a tremendous benefit," he said. Additionally, Ferry's ability to bring together different groups -- doctors, nurses, administrators -- to work cohesively was "better than anybody else around," Bowen said.

Plan never to stay so long

Ferry said he was combing classified ads in the late 1970s when he noticed a posting for an administrative post at duPont Hospital. He was living near Washington, D.C., and had just finished his doctoral degree in health care administration from George Washington University.

He applied for the listing with no intention of getting his gold watch there.

"It looked like a good opportunity, but the plan was never to be here about 30 years," he said. "Frequently, to move up to CEO, a person in my position would have had to move from one institution to another."

Indeed, three of the six health systems in Delaware have changed CEOs during the past two and a half years, and the annual turnover rate for hospital CEOs was 18 percent nationwide in 2009, according to the American College of Healthcare Executives.

Ferry was promoted to the top administrative post in 1982 after only three years on the job. At age 35, he took over a hospital in the middle of the most massive and expensive construction in its 71-year history. During Ferry's first few years, duPont Hospital added 1 million square feet, transforming into a 180-bed, full-service hospital. It opened in 1984. An emergency department was added in the early 1990s.

The revamped hospital was an oasis for hundreds of thousands of Delawarean families. Though Christiana Care had a larger pediatrics department in the 1980s, parents needed to travel to Philadelphia or Baltimore to find an acute-care children's hospital.

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Specialty services in cardiology and cardiac surgery, bone-marrow transplantation and organ transplantation were gradually added during the mid- to late-1990s, joining orthopedics as duPont Hospital services with stellar reputations. Ferry, as is his nature, continues to deflect credit.

"The reason we had long-term success is because we were able to attract excellent clinicians for all those specialties here," he said.

In the early 1990s, at the behest of poor parents of children who had no access to nearby pediatricians, Ferry helped launch Nemours Pediatrics. Today, Nemours has several pediatric practices in previously underserved areas of Delaware. There also are several specialty pediatric practices in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Ferry said the satellite offices helped patients avoid more serious problems that would've required costly treatments in the hospital's emergency department.

"We knew that if children had a medical home, they would get good preventive care outside our building," Ferry said. "The need was pretty clear."

Patient safety a top priority

It has been said that the safety of a hospital is dependent upon where patient safety stands on a hospital CEO's priority list.

Ferry claims patient safety is his chief concern.

DuPont Hospital has one of the lowest central-line infection rates in the nation. Workers also are more likely to get immunized for the flu than nearly every other hospital in Delaware and most hospitals across the nation. DuPont Hospital has an above-average rating in survival rates among patients, too.

The fact that Ferry saw the potential of electronic health records as a way to help avoid prescription errors more than a decade ago -- whereas many hospitals are only now adopting such technology -- demonstrates his commitment to patient safety, said Lawless, vice president of quality and safety for Nemours.

"Tom is one of the most patient-centered individuals in health care, and he has never been anything but fully supportive of safety efforts," Lawless said.

DuPont Hospital wasn't completely free from problems as it grew.

Delaware's Division of Public Health released an investigative report in 2004 that found the hospital failed to follow proper procedures for using an experimental stent. The report came after the dismissal of prominent heart doctors and after a few pediatric heart patients had died.

Ferry, who said he has no regrets about his career, is leaving as duPont Hospital embarks on its second major project, a $230 million expansion set to be completed in 2013 that will provide private rooms for 200 patients.

By that time, the ex-CEO hopes to have seen a few national parks, one of the top things on his new priority list.

"I'll miss the people, and I'll miss being directly involved," he said, but the hospital "is in a good place right now."